I used Gold Medal flour for the regular flour. I measured it by spooning the flour into the cup and leveling it. However, since this is a BH&G magazine from 2002, perhaps their kitchen used the scoop method. (I did until KAF recipes enlightened me.) The magazine does not include a section that reviews techniques, but Riverside Len's point is a good one. I will make a note on the recipe to reduce the milk (try 3 Tbs. next time) and perhaps increase the flour. I'll also weigh it next time and make a note.
My thoughts on weighing flour. As we know, there are different opinions on what a cup of flour weighs. If you use the scoop and sweep method, a cup might weigh roughly 4.5 to 5 ounces. The KA chart shows a cup of AP weighs 4.25 ounces (if I'm remembering right). ATK says a cup weighs 5 ounces. When you try a recipe you haven't made before, you don't know how much their cup weighed but I suspect in most cases it's closer to 5 ounces then to 4.25. So, you have to go through trial and error until you get it right. For most bread recipes, if you're experienced, it's fairly easy as you know what the dough should look and feel like. But it's more difficult for cookies, cakes etc.
I don't see very many 25 pound bags of flour in the stores here in Lincoln, except at Sams and (presumably) Costco. But I don't know very many people who bake a lot.
I've said this before, but you have to keep track of prices to know if the grocery prices at WalMart are good buys or not. They tend to react to local pricing changes, but not to the weekly sales. Costco has set up tents near both Sams Club stores and probably every WalMart in town, looks like they're making a strong push for business ahead of next month's Costco opening. It'll be interesting to see what happens to pricing between that and the Amazon/Whole Foods deal.
I don't make biscuits from scratch very often (my wife actually prefers Bisquick), but this recipe uses a little more butter and a little more milk than the recipe I've used the most, so if you also under-measured the flour that would definitely explain why it was sticky. I suspect the milk was more of a problem than the butter. (I assume the butter wasn't melted.)
There is a Kroger near me that sells 5 pound bags of King Arthur's AP, whole wheat, and white whole wheat. It is more expensive than Walmart's prices on the AP and whole wheat. (Walmart does not carry the white whole wheat flour.) Kroger actually had better prices on Bob's Red Mill AP and whole wheat flour than King Arthur, but the prices are still higher than the Walmart prices.
What I've observed is that stores in areas where there are a lot of family farms tend to carry 25 pound bags of flour, perhaps because farming people do not make weekly grocery trips but stock up when they do come for groceries. However, maybe farming folk are not baking that much anymore and there is less demand for large bags.
On Wednesday, I tried a new recipe, "Peach Cobbler with Cinnamon-Swirl Biscuits." While it tasted great, I had a problem with the biscuit dough which was very sticky, and did not roll up without tearing and making a mess. I cut them and put them on anyway, and while it did not look like the neat ones in the magazine picture, the taste was great.
Here are the biscuit ingredients:
1 Cup AP flour (more on this below)
1 Tbs. brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt (I omitted as I used salted butter)
1/4 cup butter--that would be 4 Tbs. or 2 ounces
1/3 cup milk
Now, I did substitute in 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour. I've done that sort of thing with biscuits before. Maybe I should have weighed the flours to make sure I used enough to get the same weight as 1 cup AP flour. The dough was horribly sticky, and I had to add flour, and it was still sticky. After I had brushed it with butter and sprinkled it with the cinnamon, brown sugar, and walnut filling, it was sticking to my Silpat mat and tearing as I tried rolled it into a log with big holes along the sides. I was able to cut it and plunk them down on the cobbler. It tasted great, but the presentation was sloppy.
Was it the weight of the flour? Or, was it perhaps the amount of butter?
I compared it with David Lee's biscuit recipe, and the one thing I noted is that this recipe uses twice as much butter, and I wonder if that is too much. I'd appreciate any thoughts, as I like this recipe enough that I hope to make it again--maybe even with other fruit, and I'd like to have a less sloppy presentation.
I needed to use the lovely peaches I bought at Saturday's farmers' market, so on Wednesday, I tried a new recipe, "Peach Cobbler with Cinnamon-Swirl Biscuits," which appeared in Comfort Cooking Recipes (2002), a special issue from Better Homes and Gardens. I had trouble with the biscuit dough, so I'll post about it in the desserts section. However, the dessert is delicious, so I will make it again.
Tonight, I made one of my vegetable stir-fry with leftover pork, the drippings from it, and soba noodles.
Unless there is another package of soba (buckwheat noodles) hidden in the pantry, that is my last one. I have not been able to find them here. I was going to stock up before we left Lubbock, but suddenly, they became hard to find there as well. I may need to look for a buckwheat pasta recipe.
No, I just did an egg wash, let it sit for a minute then sprinkled poppy seeds on.
I've got one or two other ideas to try, I may do a followup experiment the next time I make hot dog buns. (We've been eating a lot of hot dogs lately because I made a big batch of tomato relish last week and it is SO GOOD on hot dogs when it's fresh!)
My wife agrees with me that other than the oil version, they all had the seeds stuck down fairly well.
There really isn't much honey in the honey wash, I couldn't taste it on the bun I had for supper. (I had one from the honey group and one from the oil group, seeds kept falling off as I was eating the latter, so that method is a total failure.)
In a recent thread on My Nebraska Kitchen, the issue of how to get seeds to stick to bread came up. So, today I tried an experiment. I made a batch of Chicago-style hot dog buns (the KAF recipe), maki
[See the full post at: Getting Seeds to Stick to Bread]
Hmmm.... Tried fixing the link myself but it's not working. Might be a browser issue. I'll try a different one.
Costco sells 25 lb. bags of KAF AP flour by me. I do not know the price. NY Bakers sells five pound bags of first clear here http://nybakers.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=113 for $8.95 for a 5 lb. bag. Same price as the KAF 2 lb. bag and no one has noticed the difference yet. It also comes in a poly bag which, so far, has faired better when shipped. With KAF I lose a bag every couple of shipments (they always replace it right away). Walmart shipped me flour and literally just dumped the flour bags into a box and two of five bags split open.
Walmart used to ship free to a store and you could come pick it up there. I don't know if they still do it but it might be worth a check.
Also, they are teaming up with Google to battle Amazon and Kroger is supposed to be making massive changes and infusions in tech as well. We'll see how those go.
Bread is often commodity-priced. If there are two types of 'white bread' on the shelf, one at $1.25 and one at $2.95, many people will buy the lower priced one, regardless of their perception of quality and taste. Those of us who make our own bread know that there aren't very many shortcuts to making cheaper bread, except to use cheaper ingredients or more chemicals to increase the shelf life.
There used to be an Old Home 'day old' shop near us, but it closed. I think there may still be one on the north side of town.
The homeless shelters and food pantries usually have lots of bread, what they often don't have is stuff to put on that bread or serve with it.
Two of the grad students in Agronomy and Horticulture are running a research experiment this summer with tomatoes, they have 10 rows of them, each 160 feet long. That's a LOT of tomatoes! (One day they picked, weighed and graded over 1000 pounds of them.) They've been donating a bunch of them to the food pantry, but there's a limit to how much fresh food they can handle at a time, because it spoils on their shelves just like it spoils on ours.
Try this link:
Bread Article
Small packages nearly always cost a LOT more than bigger ones, whether that's flour or toothpaste. That's why I was hoping to have my son pick up a 50 pound bag of first clear flour, because it's only about 3X the cost of a 2 pound bag from KAF. (Shipping it would cost far more than the flour, but I may wind up doing that anyway.)
Recently the local WalMart only has KAF AP flour, not the bread flour, and at around $4.25 for a five-pound bag, which is higher than the price at Hy-Vee, where it is currently $3.99.
The only place I've seen a 10 pound bag of KAF flour (other than at the KAF store) was at a Whole Foods in Omaha, the one in Lincoln only has the 5 pound bag.
FWIW, the purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon seems likely to affect the entire food industry. But what's going to happen is that products (and possibly entire lines or companies) will disappear completely. Instead of 75 or 100 different types of bread (counting buns, donuts, etc), there may only be 50-60. At a store recently, I counted nearly a dozen types and brands of hot dog buns.
I've already seen several Heinz products go off the market, and a Frito-Lay rack jobber told me the other day that they no longer make 'plain' Doritos, because they have a dozen or more flavored versions to stock.
So be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
I broke down and tried the salted butter that can be bought in bulk. I tried an 8 oz. roll in the cookies I baked this week (I omitted the salt in the recipe), and since it worked well, I bought a 2 pound roll for $5.99 and popped the wrapped butter into a sealed plastic container in the refrigerator. It will be some hassle to weigh it out each time I use some, but to save the money, I'm willing to do it.
I'll still look for unsalted butter on sale, since I do need it for some recipes.
Those dairy cows must have a great union negotiator.
Hi, Aaron. For some reason the link takes me to a "cannot display this page" message, so I could not read the article.
King Arthur used to sell 25 pound bags of their AP flour, and they were a good deal--especially with the Baker's Bucks program. Now they won't sell anything larger than 10 pounds for mail order, and the price is not particularly competitive with Walmart prices for two 5 pound bags. When we were traveling through Rantoul, IL on our various trips back and forth between Indiana and Texas, I was sometimes able to pick up a 25 pound bag at that Walmart. The Walmart here only has the standard five pound bags. KAF also does not sell bread flour online in more than a 5 pound bag, and again, I can beat that price at Walmart. I remember Zen musing that KAF is now interested only in the professional market and the "boutique" bakers who are willing to buy all sorts of specialty ingredients--often for just a single recipe try. I've also noted that KAF is really pushing their mixes now. Someone asked in the comments section of the regular flour why they don't offer the 25 pound bags of regular flour anymore, and they told the person, if he or she is a professional, to go to the professional section of the site. Apparently "civilians" need not apply.
I understand that it is expensive to ship 25 pound bags of flour. Bob's Red Mill, which has free shipping for orders of $50 or more will not include a 25 pound bag in the free shipping offer. However, they will include bulk buys of bags--and the product is less expensive when you buy bags bundled together. I was able to try their bread flour (store in Texas had it on special), and I noted no difference between it and KAF's, so I am mulling an order to them. I like the unbleached, extra fine cake flour as well (and thank you for telling us about it on this site!). I find that they are also a less expensive source for specialty flours, as well as couscous, brown rice and other grains, beans, and I am a long time fan of their old-fashioned and quick oats.(The website is irritating, so I hope they fix it.)
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This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by
BakerAunt.
